Up early
this morning and back on the bus to the airport for a short flight to
Hanoi. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam
and its 2nd largest city with a population of 6.5 million. It is a much older city than Saigon. There were inhabitants of the area 3,000
years ago and the city was founded in 1010 celebrating its millennium in
2010. From 1010 until 1802 it was the de
facto capital of Vietnam until Emperor
Nguyen moved it to Hue. When the Nguyen dynasty fell in 1945 it became the
capital of French Indochina and then The capital of North Vietnam. After reunification Hanoi became the capital
of a unified Vietnam.
Driving into
the center of town from the airport took about 40 minutes on streets crowded
with cars and motorbikes. The architecture
is a mix of huge skyscrapers, enormous construction projects, and older 5-6
storey row houses. These houses are
quite funny looking being very tall but very narrow (some only 15 ft
wide).
They are similar to houses seen
in Amsterdam but without their charm. In
Amsterdam they build up because of taxation on frontage, here it is because of
the scarcity and cost of land. They only
finish the fronts of the houses. They
figure that someone would sometime soon build right up to their house
preventing anyone from seeing the sides or back. We’ve had some housepainters
that tried to get away with that.
Hanoi lies
on the banks of the Red River lying 1,000 miles from Saigon and only 100 miles
from the Chinese border. There are many
scenic lakes and Hanoi is sometimes called “the lake city”. Our hotel was located on Westlake, the
largest of Hanoi’s lakes.
The Old
Quarter, near Hoàn Kiếm Lake, has the original street layout and architecture
of old Hanoi. At the beginning of the 20th century the city consisted of only
about 36 streets, most of which are now part of the old quarter. Each street
then had merchants and households specialized in a particular trade,
In addition
toi the tangle of spaghetti they call power lines, here, there are loudspeakers
on the power line poles. At 5:30 am the
populace is entertained by the party with propaganda and marshal music.
We did a
walk about in the old quarter and saw some disturbing sights including roast
dog. Yes they do eat dog here. The consensus of our group was that the photo
of the dog would offend too many reader’s sensibilities so I am omitting
it. If you are dying to see the picture,
send me an email.
First processing is done in a weasel's go tract.
After our
walk, we all got into bike powered rickshaws for a trip to the Old Colonial
French Quarter.
My Driver
We passed the US
Embassy,
the “Hanoi Hilton” (visiting tomorrow), Grand Opera House and a
variety of museums and government offices (identified by the AK 47 toting
soldiers out front).
We checked
into our hotel then off to dinner. We
ate at Ly Club, one of the top restaurants in Hanoi.
OOPS!
Today was Molly’s 39th(????) birthday and we had a
surprise party for her at the restaurant.
She had “Happy Birthday” sung to
her in English, Vietnamese, and Spanish (there was a big party in the same room
from Spain).
We had cake
along with the planned dessert, crème caramel.
When we got back to the hotel, Dave called to tell us they were coming down
to our room with yet another dessert that the hotel management had left for
Molly. Really got our fill of dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment